A recent guest commentary authored by Sen. Bob Dutton, “A gun to our head: The environment or jobs?” (Nov. 28), was an attempt to blame the Legislature (Democrats) and their allies for their “job-killing” environmental extremism!

Sadly, Sen. Dutton’s first attack was against those who would limit TV sales when, in reality, the move away from energy-consuming flat screens is the motive of consideration for consumer savings, safety, and protection; can’t we live with smaller toys, senator?

The next flash of Sen. Dutton’s diatribe was against a “bunch of environmental lawyers making a living suing folks to advance an ideological agenda”!

Sen. Dutton was probably referring to the Center for Biological Diversity, which has successfully petitioned the courts on behalf of endangered species whose critical habitat was either removed entirely or reduced significantly.

According to the U.S. Department of Interior Inspector General in his Dec. 15, 2008, finding, Deputy Secretary of the Interior Department Julie MacDonald, a Bush appointee, “took actions that potentially jeopardized the ESA decision process.” The manipulation and deletion of data led the courts to give current re-consideration for those species and their living spaces.

Most of the habitat had been petitioned to be removed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, run by former Secretary of Interior James Watt, a Reagan Cabinet member, who believed that the “second coming” was about to occur, so no need to protect the planet! That’s extreme, Sen. Dutton!

The senator now claims how he (and Republican colleagues in Legislature) have cried the alarm about taxes, but he recently co-authored AB 3X81, the NFL stadium proposal for City of Industry.

That proposal will create jobs, only by taking another city’s income maker, and who will cover development costs?

There are provisions that would allow the state to support the development with taxpayers’ monies for an individual’s profit!

All those who voted for the circumvention of environmental laws and loss of quality of life for those living in the area received “campaign contributions” from the developer.

One can only walk through the ghost halls of downtown Redlands and see the effect of a similar proposal supported by Dutton that overturned the vote of the citizens of Redlands – environmentalism starts on the home front, senator!

Dutton’s abysmal record on the environment speaks for itself. He voted no for AB 2844 that would have provided high schools with “green technology,” one of his many regressive votes that would have created jobs and taught a curriculum for our future needs and opportunities. He says that “a growing economy need not be at odds with clean air and healthy forests,” but he has voted against oil spill prevention (AB 2547), a cargo container tax that would have partially mitigated the onslaught of trucks dumping goods into the millions of square feet of abandoned buildings in the Redlands “doughnut hole” (SB 927) and a climate control bill, but, most egregiously, didn’t even show up for the critical Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Plan vote! This is the bill to deal with our water supply in the future!

Finally, the last folly is his attempt to blame environmental regulations for shutting down Colton’s CalPortland Co. Vice President Susan Pantane stated, “this move was necessitated by deep recession” and that the “planned action is expected to be temporary.” Pantane mentioned that several thousand workers are being affected around the country.

The “gun we are holding to our heads,” Sen. Dutton fails to understand, is of our own making. You can’t have an unlimited population having the same quality of life with diminishing resources. In 1970, biologist Garrett Hardin wrote the “Tragedy of the Commons” that dealt with this dilemma.

You can have jobs and a quality environment to match, as Sen. Dutton began his commentary, but it will require a vision that hasn’t been seen since the days of Congressman George Brown!

Albert Kelley lives in Redlands. For 25 years, he taught marine biology classes in San Bernardino and Yucaipa schools.